rigor mortis
by brusinecka
Summary: Hand on your cheek is warm and slick with blood. He's almost apologetic. But not quite. The knife slides into you with little to no resistance.


**nodus tollens**  
_n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don't understand, that don't even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure._

[i]  
The Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, belongs to the Droseraceae family. It differs from most other plants by its carnivorous habits. The lobes of this flower are able to move rapidly and snap shut when triggered by its prey. The unknowing insects visiting the flower because of its bright color and delicious smell are soon entrapped and digested slowly by the deadly plant. The more the prey moves the more the trap tightens and digestion is quicker. Its digestion usually takes around ten days.  
But the trap can be escaped - small enough insects can crawl out by small holes. This is most likely due to the fact that insects small enough to do that are not nutritious enough.  
You really hope you're not nutritious enough.

[ii]  
She tells you she's drowning, she feels poisoned. The darkness comes inside her, through her nostrils and fills her brain with liquid grace, chokes her and slips into her lungs, she's so heavy with what all is inside of you and you can't carry her outside, away from the black liquid. You can see it, her body light against the tar, her eyelids open still and eyes become blind with darkness. She's so cold, and you're doomed and by extension she is too.  
Everyone is.  
A touch and it all burns your skin, this feeling that you've betrayed everyone and you may have played them all. But still you're not the one slyly whispering 'check', no he is.  
You've never liked playing chess.

[iii.]  
Burns to ashes, you see it in front of you, it's him it's you and he's gonna burn it all so you two can rise from the ashes as a phoenix would, the singular skull reminding you of your mortality.  
You know he knows and he knows you know he knows and yet you can't confess because you're hopeful - no, rather you're ignorant, or at least you would like to be. Why can't you choose to remain blind like Alana has, why can't you believe in friendship like Jack has?  
No. your fate is somewhere else and it's burning down with his hand so close to yours but not quite there.

[iv.]  
Shards around her face. The crescendo has come to get you down on your knees. Snowing next to her body, shaking and the coat won't do much but at least it's something. Blood and this time it's much worse than seeing a nameless body with guts on display, no this is different. Her hair melts into the bluish asfalt and you call the ambulance, calm and collected.  
You're not.  
You can smell fear and death and a tiny hint of melancholy so you go on into the house where it all ends.  
You know, he knows you know and you know he knows you know.  
This is where you die.

[v.]  
She's breathing and alive and there's blood on her hands and she's just doing what he told her too and for a split second you just wish she were dead for the breath on your shoulder, for the bloodied man standing behind you - and he was supposed to leave.  
Not without you. Never without you.  
You can almost feel Abigail's ear in your throat, trying to escape, vomiting it into the sink and seeing it, you can remember the feeling of her blood under your nails and the man in front of you is the one Creator, he did it and he can undo.  
Hand on your cheek is warm and slick with blood. He's almost apologetic. But not quite.  
The knife slides into you with little to no resistance.

[vi.]  
You see your dogs at first, barking at you. It's not the stream this time - it's them. They seem distressed and the green lands around them trap you in their vastness. A stag stares at you from behind a lone tree. Its antlers intertwine with the tree's branches and there are flowers blooming pink on them, softly whispering into your ear with the wind. Sweetness of the atmosphere hits you and the stag starts running. He's running towards you, his head down and you cannot move. The dogs around you start screaming in a high pitched voice, slowly fading away. Dark fog envelops the lands around you, swallowing them part by part until all that's left is you and the stag running towards you.  
His antlers hit you - harsh and rough and sharp against your guts, tearing through you, breaking your skin and your abdomen is soon a mixture of blood and organs on the floor.  
The darkness drowns you slowly in its sorrow.

[vii.]  
He asks: Do you understand. You do not. You shake your head, feeling yourself bloom red under his arms, falling down slowly.  
He's talking and he's not making much sense all you know is he's hurt and angry and calm, so calm and Abigail looks so much older than a girl her age should. Her shoulders are shaking and you would love to introduce her to the dogs and show her how to fish but you can't do that anymore. Your essence slips away from you, quickly like an engine leaking gasoline and if anyone lit a match right now you're so sure you would burn, burn the whole world down and raise from the ashes, reborn.

"Will you forgive me?"

and no you don't please don't, you plead with him and he doesn't listen and she's so fragile and quiet and compliant and scared and you want to hold her and she should have died then PLEASE NO and he's done it you shout and there's blood everywhere, tears on your face and darkness is drowning you again and  
she lies next to you flinching and the blood is covering her face and clothes and no this can't be it

He leaves as though nothing happened.

[viii.]  
Hand to the wound and you're losing her, you're losing yourself but you want to remain ignorant and blind to the obvious till the end and so you pretend you can save her, save yourself.  
She knows, you know she knows, she knows you know she knows and you wish she didn't.  
Blood is drowning you and the fluidity, the deja vu of this situation makes you want to laugh. Her fingers are cold and bluish and shaking, just like Alana out there and Jack's blood leaking through the door.  
He's burnt it all, all that made him who he was in here, all that connected him to you and to Baltimore, he's burnt you and a single skull is a reminder of his mortality as he rises from your ashes, reborn.  
This is how a Greek tragedy would end.  
You're not one for great pieces of art.  
The power is all lost in you.  
Darkness.

[rigor mortis]  
"This would be our last supper."  
He's not serving lamb. He's serving you yourself on a plate, with a skull as a single reminder of your mortality lying in his merciless hands.


End file.
